Winter World
by theblankgirl
Summary: Within Beyond the Boundary, Mirai Kuriyama fights. When she falls, she stands up again and again. (Until she doesn't.)


**A/N:** This is basically because I wanted to know more about Mirai's time within Beyond the Boundary. She'd been there for a while, right? So I wanted to know more. Also, the scene with her and "Akihito" in the clubroom just about breaks my heart.

In this, she still says senpai because I felt that it's such a big part of how she speaks that I couldn't really dispense with it. If you don't know what senpai means, you probably haven't seen the show. For the uninformed: senpai is the honorific you would use for an upperclassman generally.

* * *

She wakes and it's winter. She's in her room and the lights are out. No surprise there; she'd been sleeping. She looks at the frost on her window and frowns. Hadn't it just been spring?

Oh. That's right.

"Beyond the Boundary," she whispers.

Eyes widen; she fumbles for her glasses. They aren't there. Why aren't they…? Oh, yes, it had been raining and she had taken them off. No matter. She opens a drawer to hunt for her spares. There they are. They're a dull gray, which she finds both unpleasant and depressing, but she will make do.

Before she realizes it, she is putting on her school uniform. Huh. Well, that's fine. She doesn't have that many clothes anyway.

She buries her nose in her scarf as she steps outside and down to the street. It's not bitterly cold, but close.

"Unpleasant," she says out loud, and it feels good to say it.

There's no one on the streets. When she peers into windows, there is no one there. She's alone.

Well, that's good, isn't it? She tries to laugh but fails. No one will get hurt as she fights (for she will fight) if no one is there. That's good. But.

She is alone now. Again.

She's been alone before. She'll be fine. Besides, isn't she already dead? She used herself up to take Beyond the Boundary from Akihito-senpai, but apparently that didn't end it. So she'll just finish it now.

And so she will fight. Alone. Again.

"Get your mind off it!" she cries at herself.

But hadn't Akihito-senpai said that he was with her – or something to that effect anyway?

Well, it isn't true, is it.

"I want him here," she admits.

She makes her way to the school as she doesn't have any better ideas of where to go. Maybe her bonsai are in the clubroom.

She enters the school, tapping her shoes on the doorstep to clear them of snow. The halls are dark, hollow, and her footsteps echo throughout. The building feels empty even of ghosts. She trudges up the stairs. It's cold, even inside; she doesn't think the heaters are working.

She enters the clubroom and –

"Senpai?!"

She rushes towards him, but soon stops in her tracks. He doesn't move, doesn't so much as twitch at the noise she is making. He stares at the desk with glassy eyes, just like a doll.

She shudders, flinches back.

Oh. Of course, of course. There's no one else here. This is a figment of Akihito-senpai, a doll created by either her or Beyond the Boundary and she isn't sure which. He (it? _he_) isn't her senpai.

But isn't he?

"Senpai," she says. "I'm so glad you're here."

She is glad. She is. She _is_.

He does not respond.

* * *

He moves through his days like a machine. He walks forward with halting, mechanical steps. He sits in the correct classroom at the correct time, sits in the cafeteria at lunch, sits in the clubroom for precisely two hours after school. Then he goes home and lies on his bed until the morning comes.

He does it the next day. And the next. And the next. Every day is the same. There is no break for weekends, or for when the snow is so thick so as to obscure everything or when youmu and fireballs rain down from the cool gray sky.

Every day is the same. And as the days go on she only grow more desperate for acknowledgement, for him to smile at her or to argue with her, for him to break the pattern, for him to walk somewhere else, anything.

Too often there is nothing to do but to follow him. Beyond the Boundary was wounded by her attacks, so it hides, slithering around like a giant, intangible millipede.

She no longer knows how long she has been here. It is monotonous. Every day is the same.

Sometimes she tries to hold his hand. It's warm, but it lies in hers like a dead thing. Sometimes she kneels next to him in the clubroom and places his hand on her head. It's comforting until it slips off and she has to try not to cry. She walks with him home, but he never waves to her goodbye from his door.

Every day is the same.

She's cold. She might describe it as her bones and blood turning to ice, except that she is too numb for that. And yet her heart aches whenever she looks up into his eyes and sees how they are like so much glass.

One day she says, "I want Senpai to – to pat me on the head."

It's a little thing, but it would mean she is not alone. She waits.

And waits.

Waits.

He's there, but…

Every day is the same.

It's when she slips on a patch of ice and falls and he doesn't stop, doesn't turn, _doesn't even pause_, even when she races forward and tries to stop him from walking forward but he doesn't _stop_, that she realizes that this cannot go on forever. She must defeat Beyond the Boundary.

So she goes home and forces herself to rest, even though she hasn't needed to eat or sleep since waking up within this dimension. She wonders if this is because she is already dead, because she is no longer real.

She waits.

She is so tired.

* * *

This day she forsakes her coat and scarf in favor of her pink sweater because the former would only get in her way. The sweater is her favorite and the smell is comforting: like pine trees and sunlight and dust.

At least there is no wind to buffet her as she makes her way outside; her sweater is not thick enough to block the chill. She wonders what it was like for Akihito-senpai to have winter inside him all the time. Did he even notice?

She walks with him to school to make sure he's safe. Then she goes into the streets and readies her sword as the first youmu appear. They are great hulking things and they appear quickly, and she is reminded of fungi shooting up after rain.

She fights.

She blocks and slashes, slices crossways and upways, whirls, chops, stabs, hacks, slices, slices, slices…she is a hurricane, a raging storm of blood and wind.

She can feel herself grow dizzy, from blood loss and spinning. But finally, she sees an end to the youmu. She can make it, she can make it, she can, she _can_…

And then the fireballs come.

She runs, dodges, turns and slices her way through them. A _boom_ and she is blown off her feet. She muffles her scream as flame scorches her shoes. The soles of her feet burn. Almost idly, she notices that the sky seems dark in comparison to the fireballs. Huh. Oh, is it night already? How long has she been fighting?

She hopes Akihito- senpai has made it home okay.

Sometime in the night, or the early morning, whichever, Beyond the Boundary quiets. She pauses, panting, leaning against a wall. Waits. Nothing.

She goes home to bandage her many cuts and gashes.

* * *

And so her days fall into three categories: days like this one, where she sees Akihito-senpai off to school and then goes to fight; days where Beyond the Boundary is quiet and she waits, tense, by Akihito-senpai all day; and days where the fighting doesn't stop and continues through to the next day, and the next. Those last are the worst. Those are the days where her stamina runs low and her will runs thin, the days when she falls and it takes her a long time to stand up again.

Sometimes, on the fighting days, Akihito-senpai breaks out of his pattern. He sits at the bus stop, waiting for a bus that will never come. He sits in the clubroom all day and does not go to any of the classrooms. And, rarely but sometimes, he just doesn't get out of bed at all.

Often, she doesn't notice. She is too busy destroying and dodging fireballs or avoiding the great cracks that open in the ground and threaten to swallow her up or cutting through the waves of youmu, to which there is no end.

And it never ends.

And it never ends. She keeps fighting, she keeps walking by his side, she keeps falling and getting up again. And again, and again. Again, again, again. Again and again and again and –

He never sees her. He doesn't notice when the cut on her neck (so close and she was so scared) opens and begins bleeding again. He doesn't feel her hand in his. He doesn't even feel the pervading cold.

And cold is all she feels. She doesn't remember what it was like to feel warm, for the slight warmth of his hands does not cut through the chill. She doesn't remember a sky without heavy gray clouds.

Sometimes it makes her so _angry_. She shouts at him to at least try and hide, but of course he doesn't hear her. She drags him into a corner that she hopes will be safe. Then she goes off to fight, to take the anger born of concern, fear, and loneliness out on the endless youmu.

Sometimes it makes her so tired.

Suddenly, she's sent flying – and she crashes into a brick wall. She can't scream, can't draw breath, doesn't even know what hit her. She falls sideways into the snow and doesn't get up. She just lets herself feel the snow and her corrosive blood slowly turn into ice.

But that's okay. She will stand up again.

Just…

not…

right…

now.

But she will.

She's in for the long haul.


End file.
